G.A. should put FSSA oversight back on agenda

November 07, 2010

The advice from some state workers that parents leave their severely disabled children at homeless shelters if they can't afford to care from them at home is the latest call for meaningful General Assembly oversight of the Indiana's Family and Society Services Administration.

Just when it seems FSSA may be fixing a failure, it surprises us with a new one. That's intolerable performance for an agency that exists solely to serve those most in need.

The imminent departure of Anne Murphy as secretary of Indiana's Family and Social Services Administration is more reason for worry. Murphy's year and a half at the helm has been dominated by undoing the damage of the failed rollout of a new computerized welfare intake system.

The "modernization" substituted call centers and an online application process for the caseworkers who experience shows are crucial in dealing with the needy. The result was lost paperwork, erroneous denials and long waits for service.

After the state scrapped the contract that privatized the work through IBM, it sued the vendor to recover its loss. IBM sued back. Speaker of the House B. Patrick Bauer, D-South Bend, last spring listed the House's attempts dating back to 2006, to challenge the welfare privatization contract. None of them, of course, succeeded.

When Murphy took office, she stayed the failed switchover in counties that hadn't introduced the unworkable system and remediated the others. Now she's stepping down as chief of the largest state agency, with its $8 billion budget, for private-sector work.

The FSSA this fall drew criticism again with its cutoff of grocery benefits to about 440 developmentally disabled adults. The move followed a court ruling that banned the state from counting the benefit to reduce food stamp assistance.

Apparently, the state's response was to cancel altogether the grocery help from the Medicaid waiver program intended to aid the severely disabled live independently. Without it, however, advocates say such clients have been forced to turn to food banks or move back in with retired parents who must now try to support their grown disabled children. Medicaid-waiver support for other services such as residential treatment also is running out. That places FSSA workers in the untenable position that allegedly led a caseworker to suggest that struggling parents turn to a homeless shelter for their disabled offspring.

A legislative Medicaid Oversight Committee has convened to look at the issues. Less clear is the General Assembly's desire to intervene on behalf of nursing home patients, a group represented by the FSSA's Division of Aging.

Overall ratings for the quality of life in these homes of last resort have stagnated at a level shockingly low. Other states are pushing to provide more resources to keep their fragile residents at home at much less cost than institutional care. Indiana is going backward on the issue.

The General Assembly must step in with some method of assessing the FSSA to ensure it is meeting its responsibilities to the people of Indiana. It cannot ignore this duty.